Supernumeraries Make Me Happy

Today was a day of partly sun and partly windy, driving, cold rain!  We tried to go for a walk in the woods in Milton but the baseball field you have to walk across to get there was completely saturated from the 1"+ of rain we got over Friday night!  So we axed that idea and as we were walking back we looked up and saw a frightening scene:

Yeah it was pretty much going to torrentially downpour on us and there was nothing we could do about it.  I tucked my camera inside my purse and we started speed walking!

We got home just as the rain was ending, of course.  There was a faint rainbow, but nothing to write home about.  I sat down and started looking at some of the other pics I took from earlier in the day.  At about 5:40pm my husband looked out the front door and said "Ooh hon you should take a pic of that" so I grabbed my camera and ran out...into the pouring rain!  "Coulda warned me first that it was freaking raining!!!" I said and ran back inside.  I took this pic of the West:

Pretty yes, but nothing to ruin my camera over!  I said "I bet there's a rainbow somewhere..." and he ran to the back door which of course faces East.  "OOH HON its out here!" so I hurdled some stuff and ran out the back.  It was still raining pretty good but worth it!

This one is a panorama built with three images.  There is a double rainbow but I need a wide angle lens to get that in!

Surreal brightness

Landing on the hills behind my house :)

This rainbow only lasted about 2 minutes at its peak.  That is why it is deserving of a blog post all its own because if I didn't have my camera permanently glued to my shoulder I probably would have missed it!!!

A Picture Worth a Hurdle

This morning at 8:38am I went outside to put a car seat in the "economy" car to drive the kids to school.  It had rained very very hard last night apparently.  I was sleeping so hard that when I was awakened from my dream about taking an hour long shower with shampoo bottles that moo'd at me I did not know that it had even rained.

Anyhoo, when I was walking to the car which is parked in front of the house I looked into the very large puddle (I call it Lake Killmenow when it gets really big and I can't reach the car) that always forms on the lawn.  I saw a beautiful rainbow in that mud puddle and was puzzling over how on earth it got in there.  Then I looked up and saw it was indeed a reflection of a giant rainbow right in front of me!  My coffee quota had not been met at all.  I still thought I had mooing shampoo bottles in my shower.

I have never seen a rainbow in the West before as usually I am not up early enough for the sun to be at the right angle, and also most rainbows occur when the sun is setting from my experience.  I dropped the car seat in the middle of the driveway and sprinted back inside, jumped clear over both kids that were sitting by the door putting their shoes on, and grabbed my camera.  I made sure it was set up correctly this time and jumped back over the kids and back into the driveway.  I took these photos and then turned and noticed my next door neighbor watching me probably thinking I am seriously a psycho, like the kind that needs to go to the funny farm.  I picked the car seat back up and put it in the car and then ran back inside.

Always look up!

I was taking the kids to the library so I could use faster internet to upload my oodles of fall foliage photos when I saw the halo and sundogs (cut off in this pic).  I noticed the bouncy curvy spot resting on the top of the halo, and then my eyes wandered farther up and there was a circumzenithal arc!!!   I've wanted to see one for a long time.  It is unseasonably mild right now for Vermont and we hadn't had any clouds at all for 8 days!  

Hunter's Moon Over Foliage

So it was my sister's birthday this past Tuesday and we were supposed to go to my parents' house for her birthday dinner at 6:00pm.  As usual I thought we could get going with the exact amount of time it would take us to get there.  Not sure if that sentence makes sense.  Anyhow, of course we had to wrestle one or more of the kids and then realized we were almost on "E" in the van and had to stop, then figure out how we were going to pay for the gas, and then we finally got to the main road before the town they live in.  As we were turning one of the many curvy corners on Westford-Milton Road we were greeted with this scene:

Or at least I was.  I am not sure anyone else was looking until I started shouting and spazzing.  I took the above photo through the car windshield.  The mountains are the Green Mountains for anyone unfamiliar with Vermont's topography.

I made my husband pull over (I hate driving because then I can't take pictures like a brainless dog hanging my head out the window) at a school bus depot that you can see in the bottom of the first picture.  I knew we would be a few minutes later to the party but my family  knows me pretty well by now and they understand I can't pass something like this up.  I'm that obsessed.

For names of the Full Moons each month click here!

Sunset at the Milton Waterfront

When we are too cheap to drive 20 minutes to the real waterfront in Burlington we walk a mile to the Arrowhead Picnic Area which is on the "shore" of the Lamoille River in Milton!  Sure we don't have boats and seagulls and a nice boardwalk, but we do have...water.